Crumb vs. Crust

Barbara,

You may need to lower the temperature of your bake. That will be the easiest thing for you to try. The higher the temperature, the faster the outside of your bread will bake, but not so with the inside. So, lowering the heat will slow the outside down, so that the inside can catch up. If you are looking for a huge difference, lower the heat by about 20 or 25 degrees each time until it's where you want it. For finer tuning, try five degrees difference. I don't know about overhandling the dough. I'm still trying to figure out dough handling, kneading, etc. myself. But when I needed to help my overly tough crust, I lowered the baking temperature and it worked perfectly!

After two years of baking sourdough bread, twice a week, to my wife's preference for soft chewy crust, these tips works for me. For comparison, my loaves typically weigh nearly 2 pounds when baked.

1. Lower temperature for a longer time works, but a moist dough and a higher temperature does give you bigger holes in the bread, making the bread softer. Many recipes has a higher temperature initial baking phase, followed by a shorter browning phrase at a lower temperature. If you can't lower the temperature for the baking phrase more than you judge necessary, you can always lay a piece of tented aluminum foil over the loaf for the initial baking phase, then remove the foil when you lower the temperature to brown the crust. The foil will reflect the heat from the top so your crust won't get burnt.

2. Keeping moisture around the bread while its baking also help you get soft and chewy dough.

When I bake with a table-top convection oven, I bake my loaf in a La Cloche clay baker which fits inside my table-top oven. The baker keeps the moisture while I bake at around 350F (near the upper limit of my tabletop). During the browning phrase, I insert the probe of my Cooking Thermometer/Timer into the middle of the loaf with an alarm set for 200F. I leave the cover of the baker loosely over the loaf and the probe and bake at the same temperature until the alarms goes off.

When I bake in the oven, I bake on a pizza stone for less time at 400F but I put a pan of water on a lower shelf while baking. The typical baking temperature recommended is often around 450F. The browning phrase ends when my thermometer/timer tells me the internal temperature of the bread reaches 200F.

3. With all I do to get a soft crust (my wife's favorite kind of bread), unless I brush the loaf with butter (or olive oil), I often don't get enough color on the crust.

None of these techniques interfere with the amount of gluten in the cough or the amount of handling in shaping, so there should be no change required in those respects.

Disclaimer: Since I've mostly baked with a rather wet dough (Almost-no-knead style), I generally have my dough in a baking pan just so I don't get a flat bread. Nevertheless, the above techniques gives me soft and chewy crust all around. Am still experimenting with recipes that require kneading but gives me a drier dough that will hold its shape during baking.

Sorry for the Imperial units. Gutless politicians back-paddling on adoption of the Metric system doomed us!

Hi Barbara

Couple of things sparked my curiosity here.  Firstly, why do you choose to bake in a Le Creuset casserole rather than say openly on a baking/pizza stone or using a loaf tin?   Secondly, 15g yeast seems a hell of a lot in your recipe.  I would put maybe 4g yeast in a 500g loaf (normal baker's yeast), my local Artisan Bakery would put maybe 1-2g of slow action yeast in that quantity leaving it to prove far longer.  Are you lookng for a particularly yeasty taste?  15g is approaching the quantity I would use for enriched doughs for baking say English Muffins with butter and milk etc.  Cheers.